


I Am Become Flesh

by entanglednow



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-11
Updated: 2009-06-11
Packaged: 2017-10-15 03:15:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/156462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes there's a yawning chasm between knowing and understanding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Am Become Flesh

  
Dean, for once, doesn't wake when Castiel appears. He remains strange in his stillness, etches of exhaustion in his face. One arm is stretched out, and one slipped underneath the pillow, fingers loose but certain on whatever form of protection, of security, that he keeps beneath.

He waits a beat longer. But Dean doesn't shift round in the sheets, he doesn't move at all.

It seems he is lost so deeply to sleep that even Castiel's presence doesn't register.

Or perhaps he has become familiar. Perhaps Dean no longer considers him a threat.

If he wakes him, Castiel knows that his face will be a jumble of conflicting emotions; they'll pass and overtake each other, half-smothered, and never the same twice. The expressions will change too fast for Castiel to understand how they fit together. At least, not without prying Dean open and looking inside. Though Castiel will remember every one of them. He'll remember everything, the ever-shifting pieces that seem to mean nothing, yet make up the tiniest fractions of Dean's life. Fractions Dean would not be Dean without.

Castiel doesn't wake him.

In sleep he's a strange mixture of tired and battle ready, like he's never truly resting. Like his body knows well enough that his life is just one long struggling fall. Though it refuses to give in, no matter how much it's punished. No matter how much it _suffers._

Dean's heart will keep beating, his lungs will drag in air, and his blood will rush through his veins, will flow where it's needed and feed him, and make him as strong as he knows how to be. Like his body knows it's never really allowed to rest. That it knows if it rests that there will be no more, that it will come to an end. Which is the one thing Dean cannot abide.

Castiel knows what it is to not need rest.

Though Dean knows what it is to live without peace, and Castiel is sure he will never understand that. It's too strange a concept to try and weave into his own view of what it means to _exist._

Sometimes there's a yawning chasm between knowing, and understanding. Castiel has never been so aware of the truth of this, as when he is with Dean.

Dean Winchester is so much stronger than the skin and bones of him. Yet that is what he fights to keep, that, above all else, is what gives him purpose, what gives him _meaning._ Dean's skin and bones and blood are the only place he has ever felt safe, and Castiel thinks that perhaps he understands this. Or at least, understands the 'why' of this.

Though what it means to truly be _inside_ of skin and bone eludes him.

He could try to seek out the truth of it, he could open Dean Winchester out and read him from the inside, unpick him piece by piece. But he is certain he would never understand.

Dean would simply be a beautiful thing _in pieces._

His hand hovers over Dean, like he's waiting for permission, waiting for a gesture of surrender. Castiel thinks Dean would give neither when awake and the thought...troubles him.

He touches the strong-fragile curve of Dean's forehead. His skin is warm; it reacts to his touch, to the pressure and temperature of his own borrowed skin, though Dean isn't aware of it. He is aware of so little that his body does. This thing he treasures, this fragile and easily broken collection of joinings and soft flesh. Though he clings to it, like it's the only thing he will ever have. The only thing that's _his._

It's a simple thing for Castiel to make sure he doesn't wake. To leave him in that space where he feels neither rested nor safe, but where he needs to be, run ragged and thin without it. So Castiel lets him sleep.

Makes him sleep.

His fingers glide curiously across the muscle of his cheek, which twitches in rest under the attention. He leaves a trail past the line of his nose, drifting to the relaxed curve of his mouth. Soft like this, under his fingers. A flare of breath warms the back of his hand, strangely intimate. Castiel frowns, leaves the curve of his lip, and slides down further.

Most of Dean's venom is feigned, his hard-edged profanities and blasphemies are protection, hard-learned from youth. A shield between himself, and all the broken brutality of the world. Though he's always soft when he breaks, and that's a strength too. Dean's never brittle, he has never threatened to shatter into pieces. The breaks in him are deep and ragged, but they heal, and scar, and become part of him. He makes them hold the pieces of him together anew, tighter, stronger than before.

Castiel's fingers find his throat, stray to the thin line of skin at his neck where the pulse is warm and close. It thuds against his fingertips, almost defiant, he doesn't move his hand for a long minute, finding the vibration, the tiny parts that make up the skin, and veins, and blood, hard to leave.

Castiel's fascination with Dean is confusing.

He knows that this, this flesh, is not all of him. Is not the _best_ of him. But he finds himself fascinated nonetheless. By the way Dean fills his own skin, fills it with hope, and defiance, and loyalty, and _righteousness._

He fills it to the brim, and lets it wash over the sides. In a way that never makes him _less,_ but in some strange way seems to make him both _more,_ and more fragile at the same time. In a way Castiel also doesn't understand.

But he finds himself almost protective of the lost pieces that are not his to save.

He's left confused, disturbed, that the thing Dean clings to most is what causes him the most suffering. And he thinks it- he _knows_ it pains him to see his suffering.

He's no longer touching with just fingers now, but the wide warm length of his hand, pressed flat against Dean's heartbeat, letting the thrum of blood and breath hold him there. He can feel it under his own skin, can feel _Dean_ beneath it. Not lost inside but fortifying himself there, against the dark and those who seek to break him, or take his life from him.

More than anything else Castiel knows that there has not been one moment of Dean's life where he hasn't been purely, beautifully, _alive._ And Castiel wants....

He realises, that this, this quiet...worship of the skin and bones of him in the dark, taken without his permission, is wrong. Though he cannot seem to stop, he cannot _let go._

He is at a loss to explain it, because he doesn't _understand._ He cannot see what expression his vessel is wearing, which muscles are shifting and moving in his face. Expressions he has the names for, but no references, no starting point. It's just discordant noise where there was silence before, and this troubles him too.

Though he thinks perhaps Dean would understand this. He would look at him and _know._ Because Dean lives inside the skin. Dean knows what it is to _feel,_ knows what it means to be flesh and blood, to be vital, and close, and alive.

It would be easy, Castiel thinks, to press into his heartbeat. To wake him and ask him what this is. To make him _name_ this thing, that sometimes makes him feel made of pieces rather than one shining whole.

To break would be unthinkable, abhorrent, _terrifying._

But Dean, forever breaking and remaking himself anew, Castiel has never found anything quite so beautiful.

  



End file.
